debian-menu vs. .desktop

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>]

Thomas Viehmann wrote:
>P.S.: Could someone give me a pointer about moving to .desktop and why
>it is/was considered a bad idea? (Or if it's just a not worth it/noone
>has time issue...)

I believe it was considered a good idea by everyone and the consensus was
that it should be done in the long run.

I believe the first hurdle was that a translation scheme had to be provided
to convert the rather rich .desktop format to the window manager formats
for all the "legacy" window managers, and to arrange for them to be
automatically updated; this is already done for Debian's menu format.  This
would presumably involve some serious hacking on the menu package.

I believe the second hurdle was that it was felt that a translation scheme
from Debian's menu format to the .desktop format was needed so that not
all Debian packages had to switch to .desktop format at once.

I believe nobody has had the time or energy to clear the first hurdle, let
alone the second.

Someone can tell me if I'm wrong.  :-)

In addition, the last time this issue was brought up, the .desktop format
hadn't actually been standardized and wasn't being used by KDE or Gnome really,
so it didn't seem worth it at the time; it seems a lot more worth it now.

> It seems burdenful for maintainers to provide both
>and they're not always well synced (I noticed that emacs21's .desktop
>comment used as hint in the Gnome menu was meaningful whereas the menu
>file lacked a longtitle that is used as hint in the Debian menu.)

-- 
Nathanael Nerode  <neroden@twcny.rr.com>

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